We’d planned for a busy weekend at Leicester with a good turn-out in Beginners, Standard and Intermediate. After our usual efficient, useful and disciplined BAeA briefing at 09.00 we all trouped outside to watch low level cumulous develop and cover the area in a 1500ft cloud deck.

Every i-phone on the airfield was tuned to the various aviation met sites and all of us wandered about scrutinising the sky to figure out if this was a micro or macro climatic development.  At 12.50 the clouds started to rapidly decay and we sprung into action to commence flying at 13.00 giving us a potential 4hrs to complete beginners, Standard known and Intermediate free before the 17.00 operating hrs closure.

With the judging team quickly seated with paperwork G-GEEK fired up at exactly 13.00 to commence proceedings with Richard Whincup launching into the now CAVOK conditions followed in-turn by Antoine, Martin, Rafe and Clare.  Beginners was flown with 2 Slingsby T67M’s and 2 Extra’s, Mark Jefferies was the safety pilot for Clare Parkinson in G-JOKR and several of us were concerned that the huge G Load in beginners may have taken its toll.

We ran straight into Standard Known With Paul Elvidge  in the 3rdSlingsby followed by his 8 fellow competitors in a range of aircraft including an Extra 200, Laser and the usual abundance of Pitts S1 &2’s happy to be out on a sunny afternoon.

To keep the momentum going sandwiches were brought out to the hardworking judges and scribes together with what I thought my have been a surplus bottle of Cavendish Vodka in one judging chair.

Intermediate commenced after a 5 minute break to change paperwork with Jez Burgoin starting with the low line check before climbing to start his free, the rest of the field followed in tight order which meant that we managed to complete the full 25 flight day 1 program within the window.

Saturday concluded with a quick session to de-brief from the day and applaud Rafe Higson for winning the Beginners class. Since the forecast was a bit gloomy for the morning, and it was a festive gay-pride weekend in Leicester, we agreed to a 09.30 briefing on Sunday aiming for a flying start-time of 10.00.

Sunday dawned with a high cloud base and near perfect visibility although by the time the briefing started Cu’s were starting to build and drift into the zone, Paul Elvidge diligently started up at 10.00 and started taxing out before we called him back due to the gather gloom with a now 1200ft 80% cloud deck.

We started the 30 minute monitoring window and , as is usual in these circumstances, all the pilots and officials got together for a serious, structured and respectful discussion about the nuances of competition aerobatics.

In the picture here I captured an exchange related to the dynamics associated with manoeuvring on the 45 degree up line…

Sadly, despite relentless optimism, the weather conditions continued to frustrate us and with no sight of any likely improvement before 17.00 we closed proceedings at the 14.00 meeting and awarded prizes based on the Saturday results.

Congratulations to Jonathan Talyor who won the 2012 Gunpowder Standard competition and to Phillip Massetti who won Intermediate. I’d like to thank Gary, Graham, Phil, Eric and their scribes who judged and Brian who managed all the heavy lift work covering registration, scoring and results.  The Ops team at Leicester were a delight to work with and several of the local pilots, David Shutter in particular, had anticipated all the things we needed in advance of the pre-comp calls &planning to ensure a smooth event – pity about the cloud.

Simon Catlin
Contest Director